what's new / Coming Up

Have you ever wondered how other organisations are approaching the marketing transformation that's sweeping the industry?

Our latest tracking study, Media2020: Refresh, conducted in conjunction with MediaSense and IPSOS Connect, features insights from ISBA members, including over 260 senior marketers and media decision makers, outlining the steps they are taking to organise themselves to meet the rapidly evolving media ecosystem.
As one of the most comprehensive surveys on marketing change management to date, the research builds on trends identified in a similar study conducted in 2015.

ISBA’s new research insights on how brands are using in-house and on-site agencies:Report available now

The marketing world we all now operate in is evolving at an ever faster pace, demanding more data led, agile content across multiple platforms. Many brands have told us that they now feel they know their consumers better than their external agencies, for many social data streams flow directly into their organisations, consequently many brands have started to explore building their own talent in-house where they can respond directly to data flow in real time.

In recent years ISBA Consultancy has had many conversations with CMO’s seeking advice on marketing transformation, and in particular new modes of operating to ensure digital was at the heart of activities. This is when we first started to see brands expressing an interest in seriously on-boarding talent in-house and also up-skilling existing capabilities.

So we are delighted that we have been able to establish some empirical data on use of in-house agency options. Over one third of ISBA member have an in-house (39%) or on-site (33%) agency and 14% of you have both.

We presented the insights at an Ad Week Europe session, if you’d like to hear more, you can take a look at the video which can be found here.

Thank you to all the brands that took part in our research project, conducted in collaboration with ID Comms, asking members to share how they organise, manage and pay for on-line media services. New Report available now

The results are now available for all members, click here to request your copy. We have run this study on four previous occasions, starting in 2007, to try and establish some benchmarks for members to use.

Key trends emerging in 2016 are:

A move amongst ISBA members to pay for digital media services by retainer and project fees, although commission on spend remains the dominant payment method.

Rapidly rising digital expenditures as a proportion of total media spend.

Digital media continues to be traded through main media agency relationships rather than specialists.

However, building on a trend identified in 2013, advertisers are bringing more digital strategy in-house.

Transparency in digital media trading remains a major concern for ISBA members.

More respondents to the survey expect their levels of concern around paid digital media to increase going forward, but less than half have a strategies in place to address the issues.

Thank you again for participating and we hope you find the research of use.

Launch of new ISBA Contract Terms for

Media Agency Services

It is now more important than ever for advertisers to have a clear, strong and transparent contract with their media agency. The media landscape has become much more complex and the methods of buying and selling media, with the advent of programmatic trading, have become harder to understand and in many cases opaque!

To reflect the massive changes this market has undergone, ISBA has produced a new contemporary framework agreement to guide our members who are reviewing or developing their own terms with media agencies. Launched in April, the contract is in a new revolutionary form and addresses critical transparency issues surrounding media agency operations.

The Framework has been designed to help you review, refresh and up-date your terms and vitally, bring added protection on a growing list of issues, including:

Accountability and transparency which has been heightened and tightened rights across the entire contract

Impact of Agency Group deals / neutrality of strategy: ensuring that deals with media vendors do not impact or influence the agencies’ choice of media for the client

Performance and financial audits – extending audit rights: ensuring that clients have the right to audit up the food chain to Group level and 3rd, 4th & 5th parties to the contract, where ‘group’ deals sit which may be invisible to the local / individual agencies; ensuring the client has the right to choose their own auditor, not one dictated by the agency

Data ownership: ensuring clients own the rights to data created through their buy, essential for auditing purposes in particular – we could envisage a point in time where agencies would try to sell this data back to the client community for auditing purposes!

Rebates - AVB’s, Value Pots & free inventory: ensuring the client receives all rebates due to them related to their contribution to trading, whether in the form of free-inventory, financial kick-backs, added services etc.

The Framework agreement is now available to download. Simply contact Grazina for your copy and the accompanying Drafting Notes:

Please note: this contract is for our members-only. Please click the above link if you also would like to enquire about membership.

Click here for further details and to watch footage of the teach-in session from Launch Day

ISBA research study on Evaluating Creative

Agency Performance

Our new study reveals what ISBA members think about their creative agency’s performance. This comprehensive study, offering a 15 year perspective, will allow advertisers to benchmark how their own agency performance compares to the market.

ISBA and the IPA have recently launched a new Client/Agency Creative Services Contract Agreement
- the two new flexible framework contract templates have been designed as a starting point to help clients and agencies formalise their relationships in an era where services are converging and relationships becoming more multi-functional and complex.
The fast evolving marcoms landscape needs flexible terms to deal with the reality of today’s client/agency relationships which are often multi-disciplined. There is also a parallel trend of clients shifting to working on more of a project base with agency partners. The two new contracts, have been drafted by Lewis Silkin, better reflect these new and ever evolving relationships.

Debbie Morrison Director Consultancy and Best Practice, ISBA said:
“Having been involved in the development of the first set of contracts in ‘98 these new terms are the most flexible, robust and comprehensive contracts we have created to date. They truly reflect the way clients and agencies now work together across multiple communications platforms.
“It’s been hard work to get these out, but we have had a great deal of help along the way with many advertisers and agencies sense checking our approach as things have developed. The great thing is that these terms have also been designed to flex and evolve as the comms market continues to change at pace. We hope they will help revolutionise the way client/agency contracts are put in place.”

Members can watch ISBA's Debbie Morrison, Richard Lindsay of the IPA and Jo Farmer from Lewis Silkin as they guide you through the need for such contracts, what's contained within them and the benefits for both clients and agencies here